NPR reports on the BBC's chief resigning over the Jimmy Savile scandal, with this promising and troubling detail -- it's the first news account I've seen that names McAlpine, but also says the survivor has recanted his accusation:

***********From NPR:But the furor was reignited when the same program aired a report on Nov. 2 about alleged sex abuse in Wales in the 1970s and 1980s. During the program, victim Steve Messham claimed he had been abused by a senior Conservative Party figure.

The BBC didn't name the alleged abuser, but online rumors focused on Alistair McAlpine, a Conservative Party member of the House of Lords. On Friday, McAlpine issued a fierce denial and threatened to sue.

Messham then said he had been mistaken about his abuser's identity and apologized to McAlpine, prompting fury over the BBC's decision to air the report, the suspension of investigative programs at "Newsnight" and mounting questions over Entwistle's leadership.

The forces at work have succeeded (at least temporarily) in burying this story -- or at least this arm of it. Here's the story as it appears in the NY TImes:

********************

Mr. Entwistle’s sudden departure as the BBC’s chief executive was prompted by outrage over a report last week on “Newsnight,” one of the network’s flagship current affairs programs, that wrongly implicated a former Conservative Party politician in a pedophile scandal involving a children’s home in Wales.

Mr. Entwistle said the report, broadcast on Nov. 2, reflected “unacceptable journalistic standards” and never should have been broadcast.

[...]

On Thursday, The Guardian identified the politician as Alistair McAlpine, a former Conservative Party treasurer, and said that he was the victim of mistaken identity.

Mr. McAlpine, now 70 and in poor health, said Friday that the allegations against him were “wholly false and defamatory” and warned that he planned to sue. Then the man who had made the abuse allegation, Steve Messham, said he had now seen a photo of Mr. McAlpine and was sure that he was not the man who had abused him when he was a child.

Apparenlty, De'ath is also the author of the tell-all memoir UNCOMMON CRIMINAL, and this is an excerpt from its synopsis:

"A self-confessed voyeur who was recruited by MI5 to befriend a Russian spy at an orgy, De'Ath was a sexual predator whose victims included Susanna York, Sarah Miles, Julie Christie, Julia Foster and Charlotte Rampling. A godless but enthusiastic churchgoer, he made a career out of exposing the peccadilloes of Anglican clergymen in Private Eye, whose editor, his Oxford contemporary Richard Ingrams, later commissioned a long-running column in the Oldie retailing his experiences at the hands of plodding policemen, mad magistrates, crazy criminals and sadistic screws. In "Uncommon Criminal", an unrepentant sinner looks back at his deplorable but colourful life with a candour bordering on relish which will disgust and delight in equal measure."http://www.pickabook.co.uk/bookdetails.aspx?ISBN=9781857252248

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I'll be just fine and dandyLord, it's like a hard candy ChristmasI'm barely getting through tomorrowBut I won't let sorrow get me way down.

"Detectives have not found evidence of a paedophile ring – involving the organised procurement of children for others – but are examining individuals who might have had access to vulnerable children, some of whom were associated with Savile."

Same news in Guardian: "Savile and others" relates to alleged offences in which the former Jim'll Fix It host was suspected of being involved; "others" relates to allegations being investigated by Operation Yewtree, but do not involve Savile.

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